Hong Kong Island

---Tamar

---Victoria Harbour

---Pokfulam / Route 7
---Pokfulam / Sandy Bay

---Aberdeen Harbour

Lantau

- Lantau North
---Macau Bridge
---Lantau East - Route 10

- Lantau South
---Hei Ling Chau Prison

New Territories

---Sham Tseng
(Castle Peak Road)

---Shekou Bridge

---Tseung Kwan O
(formerly Junk Bay - proposed Western Coast Road)

Lamma Island
--- Yung Shue Wan

Kowloon
--- Kai Tak Redevelopment

 




Lamma Island - Yung Shue Wan

Dear Friends of Lamma,

On Friday, October 24th, 2003 members of the Save Lamma Campaign met with the Planning Department and Civil Engineering Department to further discuss the revised proposal for the Yung Shue Wan harbour and the way forward.

THE GOOD NEWS is that the departments continue to support a much reduced project focused on enhancing rather than radically changing Yung Shue Wan. An indicative map of the current concept is attached to this email.

THE BAD NEWS, depending on how you look at it, is that this will be a long process. With the scrapping of the original reclamation, the entire project has to back through the government planning process from the beginning. This could be a long wait - up to five years -- with several hurdles to pass, including the need to access funding. However, the advantage of this process
is that the technical feasibility study, the detailed design, etc. will all be up for review, and that means more opportunity to come up with a plan that truly serves the long term interests of the community. For example, the government continues to insist that wave reflectors will be needed to protect the village from the raging sea. The Save Lamma Campaign believes that these unnecessary structures are damaging to the local character and inappropriate for a sensitive tourist area. But the reopened planning process means that if the technical feasibility study indicates that extensive reflectors are needed, then we will still have an opportunity to push for alternatives such as a breakwater at the entrance to the harbour.

Thanks for your support,

The Save Lamma Campaign


Copyright © 2003. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

Monday June 16 2003

Lamma residents fight ring road plan

Heike Phillips

After a three-year battle to stop a harbour reclamation project, Yung Shue Wan villagers are back on the warpath

Lamma residents have sent in a flurry of last-minute objections to a proposed ring road for emergency vehicle access they claim is 'damaging and unnecessary'.

Fresh from doing battle over a proposed reclamation project at Yung Shue Wan harbour, local campaigners said they had only just found out about the plan to build a $12 million ring road.

Submissions close today.

Bobsy Jureidini, a founding member of the Save Lamma Campaign and chairman of the ABLE charity group which lobbies for a better living environment on Lamma, said residents had been unaware of the proposal until an announcement last month.

'It just came out of the blue. When we saw the plans we just said 'oh no - not again',' he said. The project has been 10 years in development.

The Save Lamma Campaign group has been engaged in a three-year battle to stop the proposed reclamation of the island's picturesque Yung Shue Wan harbour.

Faced with widespread opposition from residents, tourists and local business people, the government decided to suspend the original plan in January. Discussions continue over an alternate proposal.

'We are not opposed to development - we are just opposed to bad development,' Mr Jureidini said.

A spokeswoman for the Environment, Transport and Works Bureau said almost 70 submissions had been received by Friday, up from just 11 a week earlier.

The 2.5 to 3.5 metre-wide road would take a year to complete. It will form a circle from Main Street through the Yung Shue Long Valley wetlands and forest and past Sha Po Village.

'We're not saying there is no need for some form of improvements,' Mr Jureidini said.

'Certainly quite a few areas need widening. But this plan is badly designed. It does not tie in with future development plans.'

He said it was ironic that the government had designated Lamma as a tourist attraction yet intended to build a road through some of the island's most beautiful areas.

Hung Sing-yip, senior engineer with rural road development at the Highways Department, said the aim was to improve access for emergency vehicles.

'We want to build proper access roads so we can use better emergency vehicles so we can save people's lives,' he said.

Cecilia Chu Wai-sim, of the Save Lamma Campaign, said a recent meeting with government officials revealed the proposal was more than 10 years old and was therefore based on outdated priorities and population projections.

But Gavin Tse Chun-tat, senior engineer with the Home Affairs Department works section, said issues such as population growth had been taken into account and the department saw no need to change the original project.

Lamma resident Adam Luck said he failed to see the justification for the project, other than to benefit developers and as a 'glorified job creation scheme'.

'I have two small children and I am very disturbed about the safety implications of the road,' Mr Luck said.

'Some of the village drivers are already quite irresponsible and speed on the narrow pathways. A wider pathway will just encourage them to go faster.'

Ms Chu said the ring road seemed to have been planned without any reference to other projects in Yung Shue Wan, such as plans for a narrow promenade along the waterfront for pedestrians and emergency vehicles.

'The government needs to look at how this project interacts with other projects,' she said.

Engineers for the Home Affairs Department and Highways Department both said the harbour reclamation proposal was a 'separate project'.

But in a separate response from the Home Affairs Department, a spokesman said the ring road project would form part of the pedestrian and emergency vehicle access system shown on the latest approved Yung Shue Wan Layout Plan.

The future development in Yung Shue Wan had been taken into account in the layout plan, the spokesman said.